bore up brave
until she struck the number-one smell in the dago's cabin. "It's too
much," she says, handing me the cat, "too much. I'm goin' back to drown
clean."

She kissed me, and went back aboard the wreck.

But I was to stay with our sailors aboard the dago, to fetch Invicta
quick, and bring a tug. Dad trusted me, even to play the coward and quit
him. I dread to think back on that passage of four days to the port of
Invicta.

Now in them days I was fifteen, and considered homely. The mouth I got
would be large for a dog, smile--six and three-quarters. Thar ashore at
Invicta, I'd still look sort of cheerful, so all them tug skippers took
me for a joke. It was four days and three nights since I'd slept, so I
suppose I'd look funny wanting to hire a tug.

I showed power of attorney, wrote in indelible pencil on dad's old dicky
cravat, but the tugs expected cash, and the agents went back on me.

There was our sailors playing shipwrecked heroes, which is invited to
take refreshments, and tell how brave they'd been, raising the
quotations on tugs up to ten thousand dollars. Better have a whisky to
lessen that smile before it takes cramp, they'd say. And mother's voice
seems to call out of the air.

Nothin' doing Saturday nights at the office, tug crews all ashore, but
the port will get a move on Monday. Trust grown men to know more'n a
mere boy. Keep a stiff upper lip, cheer up and have a drink. The glass
is down, the gulls is flying inland, thar's weather brewing. I seen in
my mind the sprays lash over the wreck.

It was dark when I went to the wharves with Captain McGaw to see the
_Pluribus Unum_. He'd show me a tug cheap at ten thousand cash--stores
all complete, steam up, engineer on the premises, though he'd stepped
ashore for a drink. Cute cabin he'd got on the bridge, cunning little
glory-hole forrard. Why, everything was real handy, so that I only had
to bat him behind the ear with a belaying-pin, and he dropped right down
the fore hatch. All I wanted now was a navigating officer I could trust.

Which brings me to Mr. McMillan, our own second mate, buying a dozen
fried oysters in a card box with a wire handle, all for twenty-five
cents, though the girl seemed expecting a kiss.

"Hello, Frankie," says I, slapping him on the back. A foremast hand can
make his officer act real dignified with less. "Say, Mac! D'ye know what
Greed done?" I grabbed his oysters. "Greed, he choke puppy," says I, and
in my min